Portland: Mulberry Harbour

I’m not particularly au fait with the names and/or functions of the various structures you can find around ports and harbours, and this hunk of what looked like concrete, rearing up from the waters of Portland harbour just offshore from Portland Castle, looks rather odd, too tall to function as a dock, too obvious to hold anything secret, lacking any obvious means by which to lift goods – in short, a mystery. Enter Professor Google … 

According to the Historic England website, these are two ‘Phoenix Caissons, sections of the structure known as a Mulberry Harbour designed for, and used in, the invasion of Normandy in June 1944. The harbour was a part of the vital support structure behind the successful operation’. It goes on: 

The ‘Mulberries’ were … pre-fabricated concrete harbours … 4,500 men were involved in their construction, and each ‘Mulberry’ was intended to be roughly equivalent in area to Dover Harbour and be capable of handling 12,000 tons of supplies daily. They consisted of a number of exotically code-named components: ‘Phoenix’ (a hollow concrete caisson); ‘Corncob’ (a sunken blockship); ‘Whales’ (floating pierheads); ‘Spuds’ (extendable steel legs); ‘Beetles’ (concrete pontoon barges); and ‘Bombardons’ (steel mooring buoys).

The Grade II-listed structures now present in Portland harbour are two of the ten ‘Phoenix’ caissons that were ‘towed to Portland in 1946 and were positioned to the west of the harbour to protect berthed vessels from prevailing westerly winds.’ In case you’re wondering what happened to the other eight, they were ‘sent by the Admiralty to the Netherlands to repair and block breaches in the dykes, following a great storm in January 1953’. 

If the structures themselves are not fascinating enough for you, on top of the caissons, there are six sculptures representing some of the crucial people involved on D-Day: two British sailors, two American G.I.s, and two dockyard workers. As you might imagine given the nature of the caissons, the manufacture and installation of these sculptures is an engaging story in its own right, and it is well worth reading the intriguing tale on the website of those responsible, Dead Walk Designs. The website also includes a gallery of the sculptures up close, as well as a video of the whole process – highly recommended viewing!